Two people have expressed interest in working on a screenplay version of my book. I’ve been thinking about it and have hit on the idea of telling the story in my son’s voice (think Jean Shepherd’s “A Christmas Story”). He could begin as the eleven-year-old who witnesses his mom with the new man who enters her life, then age as our life story progresses.

I remember how resentful Michael said he felt initially, having to accommodate Marsh in the house. But he also felt conflicted. “I thought I meant it when I told you that whatever made you happy made me happy, too,” he said.

He turned sullen in junior high and wore black t-shirts and work boots as his uniform of choice. He hated it when Marsh tried to teach him “manly arts,” like how to use tools, change a tire, or chop firewood with an axe. (I just had a flashback of Marsh chuckling at the kitchen window, as he watches Michael try to split a log in the backyard, whaling away with the axe, in a futile attempt to cut against the grain of the wood.) 

By high school, he’d done a 180. Now his uniform was a shirt and silk tie. He loved his life and had lots of friends. But his mother and stepfather were constantly spinning the punishment wheel because of his garden-variety offenses. For example, our small town police picked up Michael and a friend for lurking in people’s bushes and changing their TV channels with a remote, just to see their startled reaction. Picked up again for jumping in and out of people’s swimming pools, so successful in annoying the owners that they called the cops. Then there was the time he spread-eagled while strapped to the roof of a car, as a friend drove him past the principal’s window.

He was a mediocre student, too. One October he read me a brilliant essay he’d written.

“You’ll get an A for sure,” I said.

“Oh no,” he said. “I’d never turn in this level of work so early in the year. It sets the bar way too high.”

Michael outgrew the antics and early on learned to love and respect Marsh. He’s 36 now, a graduate of UMass and nice guy who runs a prospering internet marketing business. He probably won’t like the idea of his taking up so much space in the story; it’ll embarrass him. I guess we let a  playwright decide.